


Take It From Me

by revengeandotherdrugs



Series: Looking For Normality [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Car Racing, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Disabled Character, Car Accidents, Car Jargon Written By Someone Who Hates Cars, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Engineering Jargon Written By A History Major, Formula 1, Formula One, Heavy Angst, Like Literally Everything in This Fic Goes Fast Except The Romance, Multi, Past Character Death, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, angst and fast cars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:02:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8946955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: Don't go to men who are willing to kill themselves driving in circles looking for normality





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> wow okay so... This AU got really out of hand. It's massive now and I don't know if my limited skill is enough to keep up and make it worth anyone's time. We'll see.   
> Watch the tags for additions and the series for drabbles. (Like I said, this is a massive, sprawling AU that will breed spinoffs)  
> Also this is not going to earn its explicit rating for like... probably 20-ish chapters so... if that's what you're looking for you should scoot. At least until the other stuff is posted anyway.   
> Also a disclaimer: I don't know cars. In fact, I can't even drive. So forgive my inaccuracies in the name of drama and fanfiction.

James McGraw hated meetings. He hated having to listen almost as much as he hated having to talk and he hated being told what to do even more.

It was also way too early in the morning to even think about being cordial or democratic.

James was seated at the large round conference table in Nassau HQ nursing a cup of tea and a throbbing hangover. Most of the team was there, including a majority of the pit crew and a man in a blue sweater who James had never seen before. Office secretary most likely - James didn’t care. He didn’t exactly make a point of being friendly.

Billy was mumbling with Max about something in unintelligible tech jargon to his left and even his low, usually soft, voice was grating.  Outside the plate windows, the rain was turning to sleet.

Eleanor Guthrie, the unfairly blonde thorn in everyone's side, and youngest team manager in F1 history, strode into the room like she owned it (which, incidentally, she did).

James dropped his gaze to his cup of tea, watching the steam rise, already bored.

“Well,” Eleanor began without preamble, laying her palms on the tabletop and gazing piercingly at each person in turn “You’ve probably already all met John Silver, your new teammate. He’s going to be racing with us this season”

James’ head jerked up at the mention of _new teammate_ , already prickling. His head throbbed.

The man in the blue sweater was beaming, all crooked teeth and good-natured tilt of his head.  His hair was a rat's nest of black curls and his eyes were almost as blue as his sweater.

James didn’t like him and the man hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

Man - who was he kidding? This was a boy, still wet behind the ears practically. He didn’t look like he would have any idea what to do with a car, much less how to drive one, much less how to drive one and _win_.

_New teammate._

His blood boiled.

Silver was saying something, chuckling good-naturedly at something Billy had said, still smiling.

James got up and left the room.

He made it halfway down the hall before Eleanor called after him.

“What the fuck was that James?” Her eyes were hurt but she kept her voice low. Her heels snapped against the floor. She looked curious, concerned, and frustrated all at once and James wondered how she managed to feel so many things at the same time.

James gave her a side-eye and a scowl by way of answer.

Eleanor sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heel of one hand. “I wanted you to be involved in the process, I really did but I knew you wouldn’t react well, that no one I picked would be good enough for you, so I made an executive decision - “

“A shit one”

Eleanor ignored him “As your manager, the longevity of the team is my top priority- we’re going to lose sponsors if we don’t step up and I’m not going to lie you’ve been doing piss poor the past two seasons. We can’t keep going on like this. The team is going under - Peter left for Ferrari and you know we can’t race with just you. We would be finished otherwise. I had to do something”

The logical part of James understood what she was saying - why she did what she did. The other, angrier part of him, wanted to punch something. It felt like a forgetting, a collective amnesia. It felt like a betrayal.

Eleanor grabbed his wrist, looking up at him earnestly “I’m not replacing him, James. We - I -  didn’t forget him. That’s not what’s happening here. You have to put that away. Racing is racing and you can’t let your personal life get in the way of that”

He wondered how she could possibly ask him to separate the two. There was no delineation anymore. Just muddy gray area where the colors had bled across the lines. She should know that.

She _did_ know that.

“We’re going over practice schedules and some new tech,” Eleanor said, turning on her heel to head back to the conference room “You _are_ contractually obligated to, at the very least, sit through the whole thing”  

.....

He sat through the whole thing.

By the time the meeting was over and Eleanor was stowing her tablet away and talking quietly to Scott, James realized he hadn’t been paying attention at all. He had a stack of paper in front of him that he didn’t even remember being handed. His tea had long gone cold.

He watched Silver - an unknown quantity, a usurper in a place that shouldn’t be his. Silver was thumbing through his own stack of papers, a concentrated frown on his face, worrying his bottom lip with his top teeth. He looked up suddenly, catching James' eyes, and smiled.

James went to the side table to make another cup of tea.

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t like me?” Said a voice from behind him as he was stirring cream into his drink.

James didn’t even turn around. The obnoxious blue of Silver’s sweater reflected in the chrome surface of the coffee maker - as indicative of his presence as a lighthouse. His accent was American with a hint of something reminiscent of mangoes and Spanish colonialism. It figured.

“Because I don’t”

“Well that’s hardly fair” protested Silver, somehow managing to sound both friendly and tetchy at once “We’ve barely even met”

“That doesn’t really bother me” James replied. It wasn’t completely a lie.

“Well” Said Silver, conversationally “We’re going to be working together for at least the next ten months and according to the boss I’m the hail mary for you all so it would probably be best for everyone if you put off killing me until after I’ve won the championship and saved your team”

Jesus, the kid was cocky as hell.

James turned to face him. His heart felt like one big bruise. “Why the fuck are you even here?” He hadn’t meant to spit the words like that, but it felt good anyway.

Something raw flashed behind Silver’s blue eyes. A split second of something lost. Blink and you’d miss it.

James missed it.

Silver smiled again - all white teeth and insidious intelligence. The kid smiled too much. It set James’ teeth on edge.

“I need a team who will look out for me,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly.

_Right, of course. The bastard can’t look after himself so he needs other people to do it for him. He needs someone to hold his hand so he can spend his trust fund on a Super Licence in the name of adrenaline and chicks. Kid probably grew up racing gold plated karts around a private track._

“Well _I’m_ not gonna look out for you,” James said. It felt a bit like slamming a door.

Silver shrugged, easy, as if they were discussing the weather “I don’t expect you to” He turned and left the room.

He limped slightly- James noticed, watching him go. He turned back to his mug of tea and tried to calm the desire to throw it at the wall.

.....

The first thing James did when he arrived home was call Miranda.

Italy was an hour ahead and Miranda would probably have just returned from her job. She worked at Monza, as a track admin. James wondered how she was able to handle being _there_ every day.

He missed her.

It felt like everything that mattered had stayed behind in Italy - perhaps some part of James had stayed behind there too. It ached.

“James,” She said by way of greeting. Her voice was like a balm. He let out a deep breath. The tightness in his chest eased for the moment.

“Hello”

They spent a long moment just listening to each other breathe.

“Eleanor found us a new driver,” he said at last, getting the bottle of scotch out of the cupboard.

“Oh good” she sounded pleased. James had a moment of bitterness that she didn’t see it as the betrayal it was.

“Who is it?”

“Some kid named John Silver -”

“ _The J_ ohn Silver _?”_

He was going to say something about how the kid was a prissy fuck but her tone caught him off guard - admiration and quiet joy.

“You know him?”

“I know of him,” she said “He kind of fell off the map for a while. It’s good that he’s back. He does a lot of good work for disabled and disenfranchised kids in Puerto Rico. Bit of a dark horse or so I’m told” There was the sound of pots banging in the background “What’s he like?”

“I don’t like him”

Miranda chuckled, fond “You don’t like most people”

He bristled “They’re trying to replace Thomas” He had to make her understand what this was - this erasure of everything important.

“James…” There was a rustle down the line like Miranda was sitting down “No one is replacing Thomas. No one _can_ replace Thomas”

“They’re trying”

“Don’t be obtuse”

“They’re trying to forget him - to fix this. Nothing can fix this” He sounded desperate and he hated it.

Miranda sighed “Go make yourself some dinner and relax. You need to think about what is really going on here”

“I don’t need to relax! I need you to understand what the fuck is going on here! I need someone on my side!” He felt like he was going to vibrate out of his body, everything coming into sharp focus, everything too bright and too hot.

“James, I _am_ on your side. I’ve never not been on your side. But you need to let this be… Thomas is dead James. He’s not coming back…”

That hurt worse than any physical pain. It was like a slap across his face but felt somewhere deep in his soul. Something deep and festering inside him started to bleed again.

“You’ve given up on him” He had wanted to hurt her, to accuse her, to spit venom, but ended up sounding broken instead.

Miranda took a moment to gather herself together. The silence stretched - almost giving James enough time to feel guilty. Almost.

“I haven’t given up on him.” She said at last. She sounded angry “That’s not what this is. Do you honestly believe that I don’t wake up every day and reach out for him? Do you honestly believe that every time I hear your voice I don’t expect to hear his too, on the other line? Are you really so blindly self-absorbed that you don’t think this hurts me just as much as you?”

“It doesn’t fucking seem to!”

Silence on the other end of the line. This time James felt guilty. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than she was already hurting. He knew, on some level, that she deserved his anger least of all, least of everyone. But it felt so good to push against someone who would push back, someone who would match his anger with her own, someone who would share this ache with him.

“Miranda I -”

“No, James, you know what, it _doesn’t_ seem to. Because I’ve moved on. Thomas isn’t coming back, he’s dead and no amount of wishing or praying is going to fix that. So I’ve done the grown up thing and I’ve moved on with my life in the ways that I can. I will never love another man like I loved Thomas, just like I will never love another man like I love you. It will never stop hurting, but that can’t stop me from living the rest of my life. You need to do the same. Embrace the hurt of it and let go of the rest. Holding on is only going to kill you”

“What if I want it to?” He sounded like a fucking teenager and the absurdity of the whole thing almost made him laugh. But there was a grain of truth there, beneath all that, that wouldn’t let him.

Miranda sighed. He could imagine her pinching the bridge of her nose and trying not to lose her temper. He knew the exact wrinkles that would form between her eyebrows, the way her eyes would squeeze shut. He missed her.

He missed her.

“I’m not going to listen to this James. I can’t keep watching you beat yourself against walls as a way to absolve yourself. I love you, but I can’t…. I can’t. Good night”

She hung up.

James wondered when all of their conversations had started ending in shouting matches.

He drank. Lounging on the sofa, watching the liquid in the bottle slowly deplete and watching the harsh, gray light fade into blackness outside the window.

James let himself drift into the half-awake alcohol-flavored haze where nothing hurt but everything ached all the same.

He thought of Thomas. He always thought of Thomas. He was never _not_ thinking about Thomas. Thomas’ laugh, his eyes, the little smile that only showed itself when he thought no one was looking. The way his hair ruffled when he took his helmet off. The books he left trackside, the books he left in the conference room, the books he left in the garage, the books he left in odd places around James’ apartment. His penchant for marmite on toast. The way he would yawn in the morning, stretching, vertebrae clicking into place and then be bright eyed and alert. James had never understood how he did it. He thought of afternoons spent reading in bed, of quiet mornings trackside, of kisses shared, and of fire, always fire. The scream of metal, the roar of the inferno. Plastic melting. Heat, raw and deadly, biting at James’ gloves and up his arms. The shouting of the rescue crew to let it alone, to back away, that there was nothing he could do. The crumpled form of the man he loved burning beneath a hulk of twisted plastic and a black haze of burning gasoline.

There was a picture frame on the end table that James hadn’t looked at in three years. He believed, on some, superstitious level, that if he changed nothing then maybe nothing had changed. So nothing looked different. It allowed him to believe, for a moment, that everything was okay. That Thomas would walk in the door suddenly, toe off his shoes on the mat and wander over to the couch to kiss James on the cheek before settling next to him to read. James could imagine it. And every second it didn’t happen tore him open a little bit more.

It was a picture from after Thomas’ first win - Spa, 2010 - Thomas holding his trophy, grinning like a maniac, leaning into James’ side.  Miranda, standing on Thomas’ other side gripping her husband’s hand in hers and watching the two of them with something very like love written in the smile on her face. James had held Thomas close and pressed kisses to his cheek and told him how proud, how very proud he was. Thomas had shook and laughed and kissed James full on the mouth with lips flavored like champagne.

They had been so young and so happy and suddenly James couldn’t bear the sight of it.

The picture frame hit the wall with the shattering of glass. It left a black gouge in the paint - ugly and imperfect.

When James fell asleep, sometime around midnight, he dreamed of fire and blue wool and the thick, black smoke of burning gasoline.


	2. Chapter 2

James was woken by his phone ringing - harsh and mechanical from somewhere in the kitchen. He staggered upright, immediately having to grab hold of the floor-lamp to keep from falling, or puking, or both.  

He managed to reach his phone just as it was about to go to voicemail. It was Billy.

“What?”

“Dude” Billy sounded frantic “Where are you? You had your final seat fitting an hour ago”

“An hour…?” 

“Yes. Fucks sake. I’m glad you’re not dead but you need to get over here asap. The crew is about to go to lunch but we need to get the data in so we can put it in the car.” 

It was just past noon. James felt like he had left his brain squished between the sofa cushions. His neck had a twinge in it from sleeping funny.

“Shit” He muttered, rubbing at his face.  “Fuck” 

“Pretty much” Billy agreed “It’s fine. We’re just gonna move Silver’s crew in and get that done first and the rest of us can stay late. It’s fine” 

James knew it wasn’t fine. 

He hung up and hurriedly washed his face in the kitchen sink, rinsing his mouth out with water from the tap. He was stubbly and bruised-looking, puffy and red-rimmed but there wasn’t any time to fix that. He put on a fresh shirt and tied his hair up in an attempt to disguise the fact that he hadn’t showered in over a week. It worked marginally. 

His head felt like it was stuffed with steel wool. Everything grated, everything hurt. It was like moving through jello - filmy and slow and tinted the wrong color. 

He decided he shouldn’t have driven anywhere in that state but by that point he was already inside HQ and it was too late for any remorse. 

Billy met him in the lobby. He looked anxious and flushed, clicking his pen and fiddling with the sheets on his clipboard.  Marigold, support dog extraordinaire and as golden as her name, leaned against his leg like a silky buttress. 

“Oh thank fuck,” Billy said when James entered “Eleanor chewed me out for making you drive in your state. Thought you were going to crash” 

James tried to scoff but it came out more like a croak. “I drive race cars for a living. I don’t think a hangover is what’s gonna do it” 

Billy grimaced “you never know” 

James wondered for a moment how someone Billy’s size could still manage to look like a child when he got uneasy. Six five and muscled beyond comprehension with a baby face - the mind boggled. 

“Silver and Max should be done by now” He explained, leading James to the door to the mock-up room where they tested seats and steering wheels and gear. 

The mock-up room was attached to the main construction garage through a set of double doors to facilitate easy transfer of materials and easy handoff of notes from the engineers to the technicians in the garage proper. 

The mock-up itself rested in the middle of the room;  a polymer chassis without wheels designed for the pre-testing stage. At this point there weren’t any actual cars to see much lest test in but the mock-up had all the same dimensions and quirks that the real car would have just undrivable. The construction of the car was a bit of a paradox - it had to, at once be created around the driver but the driver also had to be created around the car. It involved a lot of guesswork and stress on the part of the engineers. Somehow they made it work. 

Silver, dressed in his gray and black long-johns, was seated in the mock-up, clutching the wheel and talking with Max. His hair was tied up in a bun on top of his head and two or three soft black curls had come loose and bounced as he shook his head. 

“I don’t want to put padding in” He was saying, shifting a little in the seat “I’d be worried about the weight” 

Max shot him a look from over her clipboard. Eleanor insisted that everything engineering related be kept on paper to reduce the risk of hacking. Billy complained about it constantly. 

“Sliding is worse than weight,” She said “We’re putting padding in” 

“Balance then,” said Silver “it'll fuck with the equilibrium of the car” 

“No, it won't,” Max said, shooting a glance at James and Billy standing in the doorway. “if anything it'll balance out. We'll make sure” 

“I trust you I suppose” He mumbled, tucking his hair behind his ear.

“Good,” said Max. “Because you have no other choice” 

“Well then” said Silver, slapping his gloved hands against the hollow sides of the mock-up and looking around, catching James in the doorway. He looked tired, James noticed, eyes sunk in their sockets ringed with circles of shadow. James put on his best stony expression. He wasn't in the mood to be smiled at. “I think I'm done here” continued Silver looking to Max “As long as you've got everything?” 

She nodded “yes. We’ll do a tertiary mold and work on the padding and then you can try it out in the actual chassis” 

James felt like he was dreaming. It was all so familiar and yet so unfamiliar. How many seat fittings had he gone to with Thomas? How many times had he stood in this doorway watching that dear blonde head peek out from over the top of the gray mock-up? James felt sick suddenly and it had nothing to do with the hangover. 

“Awesome,” Silver said, turning to Billy “can you…?” 

Flint left the room. Stomach rolling. 

He made it to the locker room before he threw up but it was a near thing. 

He washed his mouth out and changed into his long-johns. Unlike Silver’s muted gray and black his were red, fire-engine, grenadine, that sort of red. Dramatic. Thomas always used to tease him about his choice in colors. Thomas in his respectable white and green. 

Nassau had capitalized on their driver’s inability to agree on a standard color, making their chromatic disunity into a hallmark. 

James wondered at the red - turning back and forth in front of the mirror like he was seeing it for the first time. He wondered at the fact that he had once felt bright enough that such a color described him. He wondered how a person could be described in color. He wondered what this color said about him - what it used to say about him, what it said about him now. 

He returned to the mock-up room, taking time to make sure that Silver was well out of the way. 

Billy and a couple of the higher-up techs had designed a seat for him based off of his old one with some estimated adjustments made for the dimensions of the new chassis. There was certainly something to be said for racing for a small team - the techs had gotten to know James’ driving style almost as well as he did. It made estimation easy and more often than not within the ballpark of acceptability. It made everyone’s jobs a lot easier. 

They walked through the steps of the fitting without incident. Billy and his techs knew James well enough that only minor adjustments needed to be made. 

By the time it was over James was feeling significantly less sick; the relentless pounding in his head had calmed to a dull ache and his stomach had settled somewhat. 

He changed and spent a long moment loitering in the lobby watching the rain outside, unwilling to go out into it. He had forgotten a coat and the prospect of getting damp and cold on the way to the car was not a pleasant one. 

In the end, it was the sight of Billy and Marigold coming out of the break-room that decided him. Rain was more welcome than conversation. He turned up the collar of his shirt and marched out into the rain like that was what he had been meaning to do the whole time. 

He almost ran into Silver who had been loitering under the awning beside the door blowing plumes of smoke into the air. 

“Shit!” he yelped, startled by James’ sudden appearance in his space. 

James gave him a look and kept walking. 

“Hey, wait” Silver called, tossing his cigarette into the bin and jogging to catch up.

“Look,” He said falling into step beside James. He had taken his hair out of the bun and it ruffled as he walked. “I know what happened and I know that I’m not what you expected or what you want and I know you don’t like me (and believe me when I tell you that I don’t need you to). But I think it would be in all of our best interests if we could, at the very least, find some modicum of cordiality. Because quite frankly I don’t know if I feel safe to drive knowing that someone who hates me as much as you do is going to be on the track with me” 

His words brought James up short. He stopped, turning to face Silver. Silver looked earnest, or as earnest as someone like Silver could look. His eyes were piercingly blue despite the shadows of exhaustion beneath them. 

James wanted to say something biting and harsh but he couldn’t quite find the words. 

“Oh,” he said instead, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Yes, ‘oh’” Silver replied “listen, the team needs me, which means that you need me, which means that it’s in the best interest of everybody if we figure something out. I want to be here. You obviously don’t like that. I have no interest in replacing anybody but for some reason, you seem to think I do. I don’t know what to do about it and to be honest I’m confused” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looked up into James’ face “I think we are more alike than you’re willing to admit and I think we could work quite well together if you give me a chance”

That’s what he was asking for, a chance. A chance to prove himself. James grimaced. 

“What happens if I give you a chance and you fuck it up?” Frankly, he didn’t want to give the kid a chance at all but the die had already been cast, so to speak. Silver was already on the team whether James wanted him or not and there wasn’t anything he could do. He knew it. Silver knew it. Everyone knew it. The kid had him backed into a corner and James hated the feeling of powerlessness that brought more than he hated Silver himself. Maybe he didn’t really hate Silver at all. 

“Well,” Said Silver, grinning his cheshire-cat grin “Maybe we’ll be friends by then. I do have a tendency to grow on people” 

“So does cancer” James replied curtly, getting into his car “Have a good night” 

He spent a long moment with his forehead resting against the steering wheel thinking about what Silver had said. 

_ I think we are more alike than you’re willing to admit  _

What did this kid know about James? Or rather, what did this kid  _ think _ he knew about James? They were nothing alike. Silver knew nothing about loss, about hurting, about an ache inside your chest that doesn’t go away. Silver knew nothing about him. They were nothing alike. 

He said it to himself enough times that he believed it. 

When he drove past the entrance to the building on his way out, Silver was, once again, huddled under the awning, lighting another cigarette. His hair resting like curls of wet ink against his shoulders. He looked pensive, staring somewhere into the middle distance like he was seeing something far away play out behind his eyes. 

They were nothing alike. James told himself. They were nothing alike. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something of a nothing chapter today. Things will get more interesting next chapter I promise.   
> I have no timeline for publishing, mostly because it all depends on what I'm doing on a given day but I'm gonna try and update as often as possible.   
> X


	3. Chapter 3

Pre-training bled into training by degrees. Little by little the cars were finished, the seats and safety equipment installed, the overalls were finished and the new helmets came back from the manufacturers. Little by little the collection of people that made up Nassau started looking less and less like a high-school robotics club and more and more like a proper racing team.

For James, who had watched this process every year for six years, it was just as incredible as it had always been.

He and Silver avoided each other for the most part - they rotated around the building in such a way that made sure they never had to see each other. James spent most of his time in the break room, mainlining tea and waiting for the mechanics to need him to test something or for Howell to berate him for not working out more or for Eleanor to drag him to the conference room to sign his soul away to a sponsor or two.

Pre-pre-season was an uneventful time to be a driver. Which is why most drivers spent it at home with their families.

Time was he would have spent the weeks between late November and mid January at home with Thomas and Miranda, basking in the much-needed respite from the hectic schedule of training and racing that took up the rest of the year. They would have passed lazy mornings in bed, afternoons curled on the couch. Often Miranda would leave for work with them curled around each other on the sofa and return to find them in much the same way. All three of them would cook dinner and then fall into bed together afterward. It had been warm and safe and good. It had been something to look forward to. It had been home.

There was nothing left of it now.

So James sat in the break room of Nassau Motorsports and drank his tea and waited restlessly for someone to need him for something.

He took small, selfish, comfort in the fact that Silver didn’t seem to go home much himself. Whenever James was there, Silver was somewhere in the building. His funny, limping footsteps would pass by the door of the break room occasionally and James would bend his head to his book like he hadn’t been staring at the wall for the past hour. Silver never came in though and James was grateful for it.

It was true he had to tolerate the kid - he’d accepted their status as teammates -  but that didn’t mean he wanted to see him or talk to him any more than he had before. He was still a usurper, still a thief, still the violent overturn of the last constant in James’ life.

It had been different with Peter. Peter Ashe had been Nassau’s test driver when James joined the team and Thomas’ friend long before that. All three of them had known each other in F3 as early teens, as babies practically. James had never been particularly friendly with him but, as a fellow person caught in Thomas’ orbit he had been a part of life from the beginning.

After Thomas’ accident, Peter had taken the role of pro-driver easily and without complaint. It was the natural thing to do and James could find no fault in it.

Silver, though, represented the destruction of everything. The last remaining point of sameness, the last person who had been a part of that older order had abandoned him and Silver had taken his place. Technically Silver had replaced Peter, not Thomas, but Silver was the constant reminder that things could never be as they had been, that things had been lost.

Selfishly, James wished that the team had died along with Thomas - that Eleanor had never taken over from her father, that Max had never been hired after Gates resigned, that the team had folded and gone under like everyone said it should have. At least that way things would never have been given the chance to change.

James realized, looking around the break room (at the sticky notes on the fridge with jokes and threats shared between the engineering teams,  at Marigold’s gigantic bag of dog food on the counter, at Eleanor’s stash of perrier and hobnobs in the third cabinet that she thought no one knew about, the chocolate that Max regularly brought in for everyone, Billy’s giant mug sitting next to the sink, Dufresne’s particular brand of Swiss coffee sitting passive aggressively by the kettle, the pictures of the team tacked up on the wall, the postcards sent from vacations, the magazine clippings of every time the team was mentioned in anything ever) that It was as much a home as James had, and he was grateful for it.

…..

They had another meeting on Saturday to discuss practice times and the move to Spain.

“We want to test everything as early as possible” Eleanor said in a tone that brooked no argument “We want to make sure we have everything in order for the season to begin so we’re gonna take the earliest slot they offered us to use the track in Barcelona which is a week and a half from now”

Eleanor was doing her best, putting on a brave face for the team as a whole but everyone knew, in their heart of hearts, that she was playing them for idiots. The first training block was where the nothing teams trained. It was really only a formality that the FIA wanted over with as fast as possible so they could focus on the teams that actually made them money. The teams that trained in the first session weren’t really there to race, only to fill out the grid.

Nassau Motorsports had been tacitly written off as nothing and everyone was pretending not to know it.

James didn’t exactly expect anything of himself but the realization that no one else expected anything of him either was like a slap. Apparently, no one had given a thought to Silver at all - the very fact that Nassau signed his paychecks was enough to write him off completely.

James wondered when he started caring whether people wrote Silver off or not.

…..

Miranda had always said that racing was just an excuse to be selfishly nomadic and James was suddenly inclined to agree with her.

He had been traveling the world, driving cars at breakneck speeds for most of his life - or at least his teenage and adult life  - and it had always come with a certain level of excitement and newness every time. James had always liked traveling, had always liked leaving home behind for bigger and better things. There was something freeing about it, something addictingly unstable about a life built on leaving everything behind.

The practice season had always been the kick off to that, the beginning again, the excitement renewed. Off-season offered enough downtime and stability for James to get bored of it but not enough for him to hate it. Practice season came just at the right time to break him out of that stability and put him back into familiar unfamiliarity.

This year, for some reason, James found himself sick at the thought of going anywhere. He realized, with a sudden lurch of clarity, that he had barely left the house since he got home from Abu Dhabi in November. His world had shrunk to his flat, his street car, and Nassau HQ and now, when faced with stepping outside of those boundaries, all he wanted to do was curl up inside them and never leave.

…..

He took sleeping pills instead, almost as good as staying home, and arrived in Barcelona with Eleanor, O’Malley, Scott, and Silver without any memory of the trip or how he had even gotten to the airport in the first place.

Eleanor dropped him and Silver off at the hotel that the team was staying in for the duration of training with explicit instructions to “Sleep it off James. You’re driving tomorrow”.

Silver was saying something, presumably smarmy, about coconut oil and hair of the dog but James shut the door in his face and fell headlong onto the unfamiliar bedsheets.

…..

Billy and Max met them in the pits early the next morning. They had arrived three days before with the cars and had been setting up since then.

Some other team was already on the track and the sound of the engine, high and lonely out by itself, set something volatile and alive running through James’ blood.

“Here” Billy thrust his new jumpsuit at him without ceremony.  “Get changed. You’re on deck. Sauber moved their slot to this afternoon because of some electrical failure so we’ve been promoted. Sorry”

James spared a quick look to Silver who was lighting up, shoulders hunched against the wind, listening to Max who was explaining something off of her clipboard. He wore his hair down, loose around his shoulders, his black scarf flapped in the wind.

He caught James’ eye over Max’s bent head and smiled.

James rolled his eyes and followed Billy into the paddock.

He changed quickly, noticing the fresh sponsor names emblazoned on his helmet - proof that Eleanor was doing her job.

Billy was going over some last minute things with the monitors but he grinned when James came to find him.

“Okay ready?” he asked. Marigold’s tail thumped the ground in excitement.

James shrugged but followed Billy down to the track-level box without complaint.

If Billy was given his way Nassau would have the massive unveiling press conference that some of the other teams had, complete with a cloth to draw away dramatically and probably hors d'oeuvres.

As it was he had to promote his handiwork himself.

“May I present,” Billy said with a flourish, stepping out of James’ line of sight “the Walrus 7!”

At the first sight of the car, James felt his breath catch in his chest. They had done her up in a beautiful, candy-apple red, shining under the garage-lights. The modifications to the design had made her a thing of soft curves - beauty and danger and terror all rolled into one.

They had put his number on the front end but nothing else yet and the number 30, stenciled in shiny black and gold was probably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Never mind that he thought that every year.

James couldn’t resist running his fingers along the side, fingertips sliding against the perfectly smooth paint. No matter how many incarnations the Walrus went though, she was still his and he would know her anywhere. Perhaps that was needlessly sentimental but seeing the car again, even after a complete re-design, was like meeting an old friend.

He swung himself into the cockpit easily, settling. The body of the car itself came up around his ears, closing him in like a cocoon, like a nest. A space in the warmth and the dark molded for him and only him. Something in his lungs eased for a moment. This - this was where he was safe.

“What do you think?” Billy asked peering over the edge, a child’s grin on his face.

“Well I won’t know until I drive her but she certainly looks good,” James said, shrugging as much as the cockpit allowed.

Two members of the crew buckled the harness, taking turns to make sure the straps were right. By the end of it, James felt like it would be impossible to remove him from the car like he was a necessary and intrinsic part of the machine. It was a heady feeling.

Billy laughed,  “well that’s half the battle really, looking nice”

The car terrified James and fascinated him in equal measure, she was a thing of beautiful horror, a machine of streamlined perfection, something not tangibly alive and yet living and breathing like anything else. She offered endless possibility - the speed, the adrenaline, the clarity that came with it. She offered the possibility of death alongside the possibility of freedom, a gamble every time. Take both or have neither.

But isn’t that all death is? A different sort of freedom?

James bet his life on the speed, on the adrenaline, and the clarity.  It was addicting.

He loathed it. He feared it. He wanted to take her out on the track that very second and see how fast she could make him fly.

Billy handed him the steering wheel and stepped back as the starting team took their positions around the car.

“Starting her up” Billy called, gesturing to the crew.

The engine turned over and the Walrus rolled to life around him.

He had driven cars that roared when started up - angry, startled, sudden. The Walrus _rolled_ \- easy, feline grace like she had simply been waiting for him to call her back to action.

“Alright, captain” Billy’s voice came over the radio, as distant and irreproachable as the voice of God for all that he was standing less than three feet away “you can put her into gear and take her out whenever you’re ready.”

James toggled her into gear and glided out of the garage and onto the track.

He stayed slow through the pitlane, inching along, listening to the way the engine had changed, feeling the way the tires moved against the track.

“Okay,” Said Billy’s voice once he was safely out of the pit lane “Open her up and see. Take five or so laps as a trial and then we want to see the fastest time you can give us”

James complied.

There is something magical about an empty track - something almost transcendent or wrong about it. It’s too empty, too barren, in the absence of crowds and summer heat a race circuit becomes a vacuum for light and heat and noise that James was all too happy to fill.  

The Walrus handled better, she was tighter, wound up, smooth. Billy had really done a number on her. She purred, content, as happy to be back on the track as James was. She was a new creature - the drag was different, the crush-area a little wider, the center of gravity a little lower - but she was also the same or rather she felt the same which was what mattered.

He took his time, looping lackadaisical around the track, re-learning what it meant to feel calm, what it felt like to be relaxed, to feel safe in his own skin for a moment. There was no room for anything else, just the sound of the engine and the feel of the car all around him.

He gunned it on the last lap at Billy’s request - laughing out loud at the sensation of it until the corner stole his breath. The brakes smoked against the corners, the back end swinging wide as if the car itself wanted to fly away.

Once, when he was young, James had almost drowned. He had been swimming in the ocean, out on the swells of the waves where they would rock him gently up and down as they passed beneath to crash into the beach behind him. But a wave had broken too soon - risen like a black wall in front of him before curling over, lifting James into itself and crashing down. But there, in that split second between the horror of the realization and the terror of drowning there had been a moment of quiet - a split second spent inside the curl of the wave itself, and in that moment James had found he could breathe.

That was what driving was to James. It was that moment between horror and terror when everything is still, that split second paradox where one can breathe underwater, where a human can fly without leaving the ground.

And abruptly, it’s all over - the human returns to earth, the paradox fractures, and the wave breaks and all that you’re left with is a mouthful of sand.

James left the cockpit reluctantly, peeling off his helmet and gloves and setting them on the bench at the back. Billy was talking excitedly with some of the other techs, gesturing with a pen. Marigold pressed up against his calf.

James huffed out a breath and pushed his sweat-damp hair back with shaking hands. It was getting too long. He had to get it cut soon.

“One minute, twenty-four point six seconds” Silver said from behind him, “Well done” he sounded like he meant it.

He was still in his street clothes although he had taken the time to put his hair up. James thought It looked like some sort of goth birds nest. His eyes were so strikingly blue, like bits of glass. He was dangling two plastic bottles of water between the fingers of one hand.

James fixed him with his very best death-glare, flopping back into an available chair and undoing the top snap on his overalls to let the air cool off his neck.

“What the fuck are you doing in my box?”

Silver handed him a water bottle which he took without acknowledgment, cracking the plastic ring and taking a sip. He had the passing thought that maybe Silver had poisoned the water.

“Oh pardon me,” Silver said, rolling his eyes and taking the seat next to James without invitation“I didn’t know this box was owned by you personally, I thought it was owned by the team”

James didn’t even dignify that with a response, simply shot Silver the bird and stared intently at the small square of sky visible out the box door.

The wave still hadn’t broken, the paradox persisted, James could still breathe.

He didn’t notice it until after Silver got up to leave. Sometimes you don’t notice calm until it isn’t there anymore.

James finished the water in one go, giving himself brain-freeze to keep from thinking about it for too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so 1. I'm sick as a dog so this is not exactly coherent. 2. This chapter got so long I had to split it into two parts. Part two of which isn't finished yet but which will take us up to the Australian GP/the first race of the season yay! 3. I am really disheartened by writing this au tbh and while I love it with all my heart and soul I think this intro period is boring af and I apologize to everyone who suffered through.  
> That being said, thank you for reading me blather on about character background and angst and worldbuilding for thousands of words. It's a lot of fun and I promise the payoff is gonna be worth it. I promise.  
> (Fun fact: F1 tires are filled with nitrogen in order to avoid the pressure changes due to humidity and temperature that happens with regular oxygen-filled tires!)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for descriptions of a car accident and a very clinical account of necrosis (tissue death) in a leg (nothing too graphic, don't worry).

Silver beat his lap time by three point two seconds and the test weekend best by 0.3 seconds. 

James had gone trackside to watch Silver’s run, huddled in the grandstand in the sun. February in Barcelona wasn’t cold exactly but the wind whipped down the track like it had something to prove - wiggling its way into the cracks between buttons and the spaces between a zipper’s teeth. 

Silver’s car was black and, by some stroke of genius, silver. The number 6 was painted proudly on the nose and glittered in the afternoon sun. The bodywork mirrored the Walrus’, the engine screamed in the same lonely way, for all intents and purposes it was the same car. Seeing it out on the track though, driven by someone else, it looked like something completely foreign. 

Silver drove like he spoke - at once lazy and regulated, spontaneous and practiced, a study in paradox. There was a fluidity to it, a smoothness to the shifts that Flint wouldn’t have expected from him. Silver made speed look easy, like movement on such a grand scale was his natural state. He wasn’t a person made to fly through the wonders of a thoroughbred machine, but rather a person  _ allowed  _ to fly as they were always meant to. It looked right and natural and good. 

(Thomas had driven with the same sort of comfortable grace.) 

James knew a better driver when he saw one and the truth of it burned. 

After Silver’s testing block James made his way down to Silver’s box. 

He found Max and Billy standing around the computer bank going over sets of data and arguing with each other. Silver, hair up in a bun, sweaty and triumphant with his jumpsuit unzipped, was lounging in a chair nearby, smoking. Marigold was sitting pressed up against his left leg with her soft golden head in his lap. Silver was using the hand that wasn’t holding his cigarette to absent-mindedly stroke her nose. She seemed to be enjoying that. 

“...It’s the same fucking car” Billy was saying, jabbing a finger at a line of data on the screen “what the Hell?” 

“That’s what I’m saying!” Max cried, throwing up her hands “It even weighs the same” 

Billy narrowed his eyes at the data and whispered a defeated “what the Hell?” 

“See? We beat you!” Max pronounced, grinning like a maniac. She had her headset hanging around her neck and her hair up in an elaborate fountain of curls. Somehow her eyeliner was perfectly intact. Somehow she managed to make the team polo shirt look like a million bucks. “We win!”

“I wasn’t aware we were racing  _ each other _ ” Billy griped “We’re supposed to be on the same team” 

“Everything's a competition cherie” Max said, patting his arm in a conciliatory fashion “a competition that we just won” 

They turned back to the data, pulling up comparisons of airflow and downforce between the corners and between the laps; running calculations and comparing them back against each other. 

“I just beat your lap time by three seconds,” Silver said when he caught sight of James in the doorway. He grinned, teeth stunningly bright - like a marquee spelling out the words  _ I’m a little shit _ . 

James scowled at him.

“Three point  _ two _ seconds” Max piped up.

Silver exhaled a massive cloud of smoke on a chuckle and coughed. “It’s not that big a deal” 

“Mon petit frisé” Max said like she was explaining the obvious “This team hasn’t had a lap on this track under 1:23.6 in all the time I’ve worked here. This is a big fucking deal” 

Silver shrugged but he was glowing “I just drove” 

“Well, make sure you drive like that on race day and we won’t have any problems” James said. He had to admit, he was impressed, and a little jealous. It wasn’t like Silver was all that much lighter or smaller than him and their cars had the same engines, the same brakes, the same everything. James didn’t really have an excuse for why he was so much slower. Silver drove like James didn’t and that was all it came down to. 

People like to say that there’s no skill to racing but really skill is the only thing that matters. Skill and strategy can make or break a race, can make or break a team. It’s like chess - if chess pieces moved around the board at 220 miles an hour. 

“Well, I’m gonna go get a beer and reflect on my failings as an engineer,” Billy said, “You good?” he asked Silver. 

Silver nodded “Yeah yeah. Go do that” He gave Marigold one last scratch behind her ear before she got up to follow Billy - plumed tail wagging sedately, banner-like. 

James had to do a double-take. 

He had thought that Marigold had been leaning against Silver’s left calf to rest her head on his thigh but now he realized, with some sort of detached shock, that she couldn’t possibly have been. Simply because Silver had no calf to lean against. Below Silver’s left knee - where, logically, there should have been a shin bone, and a calf, and an ankle, and then a foot below that - there was only empty air. 

They must have made Silver a special jumpsuit because the black Nomex was zipped closed over the stump, no excess fabric. Silver’s one white shoe tapped the floor. 

A crutch dinged up from use, rested against the side of the chair. 

The socially conscientious part of James was telling him to stop staring - that it was rude and probably uncomfortable - but the stronger, less socially adept part of him was too busy fitting everything together. Silver whose chronic limp seemed to be as much a part of him as everything else, Silver who needed extra padding in his car to keep him from sliding around, Silver who needed Billy to help him in and out of the car, Silver who had a complex about not being  _ right _ …. It all made sense suddenly. 

James had to hold on to the end of the computer bank to steady himself. 

“Jesus,” Silver said, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to stare?” He was smiling but it was strained. There was something very scared sitting just out of reach behind the shuttered blue of his eyes. 

“Sorry,” James said, not quite sure what he was sorry about, aggressively looking anywhere but where Silver’s leg should have been. 

_ I need a team who will take care of me _ Silver had said. James wasn’t sure what to do with that now.

“You didn’t know?”

Flint looked at him blankly. Silver huffed out a breath that could have been either amused or angry but settled somewhere in the vicinity of sarcastically wonderstruck. 

“I can’t believe you have your head so far up your own damn ass…” 

“I crashed.” Silver said when it was clear that James wasn’t going to say anything “Formula 3. It’s all online if you’re curious” He reached for the crutch and swung himself upright with a movement fluid from practice. “In the wise words of Niki Lauda, you only need a right foot to drive and” he added, trying to lighten the mood “since I  _ only _ have a right foot now I’d imagine I have a bit of an advantage” 

“Oh” said James. 

“Yes, oh” Silver retorted, looking at him shrewdly. He was guarded, defensive, expecting something bad. After a moment he shrugged, defeated “Just let me do my fucking job yeah? Remember that I beat your time today” He hobbled out of the box. James watched him go. 

“Fuck you James,” Max said conversationally from her spot by the computers. 

James left without giving her a reply. 

…..

Their last night in Barcelona a truce was called and all the teams and crews gathered at the opulent, dim-lit Pirelli outpost, ordered dinner and drank excessive amounts of Spanish wine in honor of the new season. 

It was mostly a PR thing and Eleanor had made them go but James did legitimately respect a lot of the other drivers. It would have been nice to meet the newcomers and catch up with old rivals before the bloodlust brought on by the official season began in earnest except for the fact that James was feeling distinctly off-kilter. He wanted to go home, or to Italy to visit Miranda, he didn’t really care which. 

He hadn’t seen Silver much in the past 3 days and the quiet was starting to get on his nerves almost as much as Silver’s presence did. He had said something wrong or done something wrong and the fact that the thought of that bothered him, bothered him even more. 

He knew he had made an ass of himself and he still hadn’t apologized, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to apologize or even if that was the right thing to do in this situation. John Silver, who had just begun to be familiar, was now a complete unknown again. The uncertainty of the whole situation was driving James mad. 

So he sat at the bar and drank the free alcohol and tried to avoid journalists and other drivers as much as possible. 

Silver it seemed, was enjoying himself immensely. He was seated on one of the brown leather sofas, chatting animatedly to a svelte journalist from Sky. He smiled his smarmy, thousand watt smile and brushed a lock of inky hair out of his eyes, leaning forward, closer to the woman seated next to him. The journalist laughed at something he had said, clearly all over him. 

James took a long swallow of his martini wishing Silver luck. It had long been a complaint of Eleanor’s that he had no idea how to be a people person. Well, now she had Silver, the most people-y people person one could ever ask for. James hoped she had at least some idea what she had signed up for. 

Billy was chatting with a couple of Toro Rosso techs near the door. Marigold, sitting in perfect heel position was on high alert, pressed against Billy’s calf. Despite his height and intimidating bulk, loud noises, confined spaces and many people were recipes for disaster for Billy. He seemed to be coping, though, if not exactly comfortable. 

Max and Eleanor were seated at a table towards the middle of the room; Max deep in conversation with the French driver from Haas, Eleanor deep in conversation with his manager. Max wildly flailing her hands in order to bridge the accent gap between Canadian and continental French. The driver, twiggy and blonde with eyes like a frightened deer, seemed to be following however and responded in kind. 

No one was paying attention to James which made it easy to slip off his stool and cross the paddock out into the pit lane. 

The night was cool and clear and quiet, stars visible somewhere in the velvet blackness beyond the floodlights. 

James remembered nights with Thomas spent walking the track before a race - the way the floodlights would catch like spun gold in Thomas’ hair, the small, soft frown that would form as he did his best to memorize the texture of the asphalt as it passed beneath his feet. 

James went with him as company more than because it actually helped him in any way. He went to spend a few quiet moments with Thomas before the energy of the weekend caught up to them. They would talk, softly, leaning close, about inane things like what they would get Miranda for her birthday, or where they wanted to spend the holiday. Every now and then, once they were out of sight of the pits and the grandstand, Thomas would find some patch of shadow and kiss him in it - gentle, soft, strong hands against his sides pulling the tension and anxiety from his bones. 

They had built heaven out of tiny, stolen moments of peace. The crumbs from the table, the leftovers, the scraps. And it had been enough. It had been so much more than enough. Those forbidden moments stolen in the dark spaces between floodlights had been a feast of love enough to last them the rest of their lives.

Or at least that’s what James had always told himself - that every time he kissed Thomas was enough to be the last. Until, of course, the last time came and James realized that nothing, nothing would ever have been enough. 

His absent-minded wandering had brought him to one of the Nassau boxes, doorway like an open eye watching the empty track. The car had been covered by a tarp and it seemed to float, ghostly, somewhere above the floor. 

Silver’s black and gray team sweat-jacket was slung over one of the tables. Silver’s box then. 

Silver. Dear God, Silver. Suddenly he had the overwhelming urge to  _ know _ . 

_ “It’s all online”  _ Silver had sad like it was some kind of permission. Without stopping to think about it, he turned to one of the big-screen computers and typed in ‘ _ John Silver accident _ ’. 

There were a few news articles, a Wikipedia excerpt that didn’t really tell him anything, and a video - grainy cellphone footage thumbnail. James clicked it without thinking. 

It opened to the deafeningly tinny noise of engines, floodlights glinting off wet asphalt. Two cars whizzed by - battle for first. James didn’t recognize the drivers. The camera swung around to catch the two cars coming up behind. James recognized Silver immediately, driving reckless, trying to block the car beside him, roaring into focus down the straight. They hit the corner, Silver coming in too hot in his single-minded focus to get ahead. 

James saw it coming seconds before it happened, driver’s instincts kicking in and playing out the probability with time to spare. 

Silver skidded, out of control, tires spinning but not getting any traction against the wet track. The car flipped, falling halfway on its side, crumpled against the barrier, bits of carbon fiber shell spinning off in every direction.

The back end stuck partially into the track, wheels spinning. 

James' heart was in his throat.

A blurry figure, Silver, dragged himself slowly from beneath the car, leaning himself up against the barrier, stunned, legs out in front of him.

“Dear God move” James whispered at the screen, horror sitting tight and heavy in his lungs. 

Before you’re taught to drive you’re taught to crash. You crash, you get out and you get out of the way. 

James knew what was going to happen, he saw it, as if in slow motion. 

The car in fourth barreled around the corner, blinded by the water and steam, watching for the car in fifth - front wheel catching on the back wheels of Silver’s mangled car, throwing Silver’s car against the barrier with Silver caught in between. The other car rocketed around, dragging against the barrier, throwing sparks. 

Silver’s screams could be heard even above the noise of the engines. 

The car in fifth (now in fourth) sped around the corner and away. 

The rest of the pack raced past but James was focused on the two cars against the barrier. 

Silver’s car rocked, settling, and the screaming stopped. 

James wanted to throw up, heart in his mouth. 

Where were the rescue crews? Where was the ambulance? 

The other driver clambered out of the car, unharmed. 

_ Please God go get him _

The other driver walked away. Barely noticing Silver’s crumpled car behind him. 

“Somebody get him! Holy fuck somebody get him!” He was yelling but he couldn’t even hear himself. It was like he was watching it happen right in front of him in real time.

Where the hell were the rescue crews? 

“Somebody get him!” The helplessness swamped him. He couldn’t do anything, this had already happened, fate had already played out. He couldn't change it. No one was coming. 

No one was coming. No one was there. 

The video ended. 

James sat for a long moment, staring at the still image of the crumpled car on the screen, Silver, trapped beneath somewhere. 

The silence was deafening. 

“fifteen minutes,” said Silver’s voice from behind him. 

He was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. Hair done up in a messy bun and a haunted look in his eyes, staring, transfixed by the image of his mangled car on the screen. He was holding his sweat jacket, obviously having come back for it. 

“That’s how long it took for them to get to me. Fifteen minutes.They had to call the triage team and it took them too long to arrive. By that point the tissue in my leg was dead and the rest of my body was shutting down. Sometimes I think they wanted me to die” He shrugged, clinical, emotionless. There was something unnatural and heartbreaking about the flatness of his tone. It said that he was used to it. No one should have to get used to that kind of pain.  He looked so small, haloed in hazy streetlight, pulled in on himself like he could simply disappear. 

James wasn’t sure what to do.

“It’s always strange seeing your nightmares on the big screen when you’re supposed to be awake”

James wanted to say something, say anything to him. But he just sat there, the sound of screaming metal ricocheting around inside his head. 

Silver left. 

James could hear his odd, limping footsteps fade away across the garage floor. The soft-edged shape of him cast in stark shadow against the light before being swallowed by the darkness. 

_ “I need a team who will look out for me”  _ Silver had said the first time they met. James had taken that as a confession of ineptitude, that Silver couldn’t hold his own. Now he understood. Silver  _ could _ hold his own - had always held his own. He didn’t want hands to hold or shoulders to cry on, what he wanted was people who would be there when he needed them. 

Because he didn’t want to hold his own any longer. 

Because he was tired of being left for dead. 

James leaned over abruptly and threw up on the garage floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Silver's lap time was 1:21.4 seconds which is pretty much unheard of (let's pretend I know what I'm talking about). If we were operating in a world with actual F1 stuff going on Silver would have beat Kimi Raikkonen's 2008 track record by 0:0.2 of a second which is also pretty much unheard of. (Sorry Kimi, we are pretending you don't exist).  
> \- The French Haas driver who Max is talking to at the dinner does actually exist, his name is Romain Grosjean and he does actually look like some kind of willowy faun creature (can you tell he's my fave? I'm probably gonna shoehorn him in a couple more times b/c I love him and I'm shameless)  
> \- I have no idea when you guys can expect the next update. Please just stay tuned and have faith in me. Next chapter will get into the actual proper season (yay! actual racing!).  
> \- Fun Fact! F1 racing suits are made out of Nomex which is a lighter, thinner version of Kevlar. It is water, flame, heat and radiation resistant.  
>   
> As always lots of love to everyone who reads and comments and kudos. You guys make my life.


	5. Chapter 5

They didn’t talk about what had happened in the box that night, what James had seen. And little by little it all took on the hazy feeling of a dream in James’ memory. He remembered the sound of it, though - tinny as it had been, fed through a bad microphone and worse speakers. Silver’s screams followed him into his dreams, blending with Thomas’ in a terror that left him unable to sleep. 

They found some sort of uneasy truce, understanding, on some level, that it would be impossible to be violently antagonistic in James’ case or snidely defensive in Silver's and also race together. The things they  _ didn’t _ talk about weighed heavy whenever they were in the room together and Silver’s smile and general lackadaisical way of being still set James’ teeth on edge but they managed.

February inched into March and tensions at the Nassau offices reached a fever pitch. The scramble before the first race of the season always reminded James of the scramble before the first day of school - everyone overtired and anxious. 

The cars had to be moved out two weeks before the race itself, in pieces, to be reassembled in the boxes on site. The two engineers and a bare-bones mechanic crew went with them. Everything seemed much quieter without them around. 

Inevitably things went wrong. They had to, at the last minute, machine an entirely new set of tiny, delicate, steering components for James’ car because the backup set had been crushed in transport. Billy nearly had an aneurysm. 

James was sitting in the break room on facetime with his engineer which, he realized, should have been odd. Silver was making a cup of coffee, hair up in its customary birds-nest bun, hip leaned against the counter in a way that at once managed to take the weight off his prosthetic and look cockily at ease. 

“You have to put them in your carry on” Billy was saying. He was anxious and sun-burned, face slightly pixelated on James’ screen. It was the middle of the night in Melbourne and James could see city lights out the hotel room window. “You can’t touch them with your hands, wear gloves, make sure they’re packed in styrofoam” 

“Jesus this is too damn complicated” James complained, “Why can’t we express them?”

“This is why they pay me the big bucks,” Billy said “And I don’t trust the mail, they won’t get here in time or they’ll break. You need to take them” 

“You must take the ring to Mordor!” Silver quipped, stirring milk into his coffee. James glared at him. Silver just grinned. His eyes were strikingly blue, laser beams, bits of ocean that glittered when he smiled. 

James huffed out an annoyed breath. Silver laughed at him. 

“James it’s your damn car,” Billy said, sounding close to hysteria. Marigold made a brief appearance in the frame, hopping up onto the bed to lean her golden side against Billy’s arm. “If you want to die because you didn’t have extra parts on hand and you want me to get put in jail for negligent manslaughter then you do that”  

…..

Which was how James ended up with £2,000 worth of delicate, breakable, car parts in his carry on. It felt a bit like carrying a live bomb. Silver laughed at him. James told him to go fuck himself.

…..

The 23 hour flight from London to Melbourne passed without incident. With the exception of a brief interlude at the very beginning which involved Silver being ordered to remove his leg at the security checkpoint at Heathrow and ended with Eleanor yelling at the security officer about prejudice and threatening to report him. Eventually Scott was able to pull her away. The poor officer looked about ready to pass out. Silver looked like he had just swallowed the sun, shining and uncomfortable. 

The hotel had given Silver and James connecting rooms, out of what kind of misunderstanding James didn’t know. He and Silver came to an unspoken agreement that the connecting doors would stay firmly locked. 

James delivered the parts to Billy and promptly returned to his room and passed out. 

…..

Race weekends are strange things. As a spectator they are spectacular, special, once in a lifetime experiences. Three days of adrenaline and alcohol and the smell of high-octane fuel, lights and music and a little slice of screaming heaven carved out of the monotony of everyday life.  

For drivers they are a job - they are the obligations of press conferences and social functions that it is necessary to suffer through in order to race. Race weekends are hyper-monitored, hyper-planned, every little thing is scripted and made acceptable, every move one makes always on display, always being judged. As a driver the race weekend is a little bit like being an animal in an opulent zoo - the captivity only made bearable by the moments of technicolor freedom spent on the track.

For James they were terror. 

The crowd had never made him happy, had always been an unfortunate side-effect of doing what he did - but now they were enough to make him never want to see the light of day again. He was an introvert at heart. He only did what he did to feel alive.  

Silver, on the other hand, seemed to thrive off of it or, at the very least, manage. He slithered his way through the innumerable press conferences with snark and easy grace - always smiling, always genial. James envied him. 

At the first couple conferences Nassau had been somewhat maligned - no one cared who they were or what they thought - but journalists learn fast and Silver’s irreverent joking and his place as a curiosity meant that they were asked more questions as the weekend wore on. 

The problem with this was that the questions became more and more invasive as people’s interests in the “new kid” rose. James watched Silver grit his teeth and smile through numerous questions about his leg, his accident, his past. His skills of evasion were impressive, James had to admit, he never told anyone too much and he was good at feigning ease. Beneath the table however his right leg would bounce, shaking the entire platform, betraying his nerves. No one but James seemed to notice. 

Practices were their own kind of torture. They were operated under the regimented structure of the race itself without any of the payoff or freedom that came with it. The car became its own sort of prison for James during practice sessions - closed off and claustrophobic. The freedom was there, it hummed, just out of reach. He felt like an addict seeing the object of his addiction through a window, locked out, unable to get to the one thing that would make him feel better. 

Practices and press and meet and greets all blurred together in James’ mind in a riot of color and sound and people. It left him feeling strung out and dry, stinging around the edges, like he wasn’t fully corporeal anymore. 

Qualifying passed in a blur that James barely cared about. Generally qualifying is cited as the most important part of the race, even more important than the race itself. The faster the driver laps in qualifying  the higher their starting place on the grid and the higher the probability for a good finish the next day. James had long since given up on himself, qualifying wasn’t about proving anything to anyone anymore, it was simply about being allowed to race. 

James landed himself a perfectly respectable P10 for the next day. Silver, in a twist that surprised everyone but James, landed P6 - the highest starting position Nassau had held in years. The commentators and reporters were more than a little shocked. 

_ “I mean holding a starting position that high puts Nassau in the ranks of the best manufacturers. It’s really quite surprising”  _ One of the reporters was saying over the radio. The Nassau team was sitting in Silver’s box after quali, gathered around the computer bank which was running a live feed of the radio broadcast.   _ “It puts him up directly between Rackham and Ashe which, for any normal newcomer would be tough stakes but for Silver I imagine it will be moreso given the nature of his… erm…”  _ The reporter stalled “ _ driving style” _ he finished lamely.

James bristled at the thinly-veiled reference to Silver’s leg.  Silver, seated in one of the tech’s chairs beside him seemed to shrink in on himself, self-conscious and doubtful. 

_ “Well we’ll have to see how he fares tomorrow,”  _ The other reporter said, rescuing his partner from sticking his foot even further into his mouth  _ “I mean honestly Nassau hasn’t really given us much to hope for in the past and hope is rather slim that this season will be any better…”  _

Eleanor stalked over and aggressively turned the radio off. 

…..

“I feel like some kind of freak” Silver said on Saturday evening. The race was the next day but they were drinking anyway, some kind of obscure Australian beer, sequestered in a booth at the back of a pub that Billy had taken them to. Eleanor, a self-professed hater of beer, was on her third whiskey and was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. Max, seated between Billy and James on the opposite side of the table, laid a slightly drunk hand on Silver’s. 

“You just have to drive super fast tomorrow.” she said “Super fast. Prove them all wrong”

“What if I can’t” Silver said, worried. His leg was bouncing under the table again. James watched the beer in his glass slosh with a sort of detached interest. 

“You will,” Max said, like that decided everything. 

“But what if….”

“Shut up Silver,” Eleanor said, she sounded like she had a headache “All you have to do is drive. We’ll take care of the rest” 

…..

The morning of the race proper dawned pleasantly cool, cloudless and calm for the most part. Sleep the night before had been impossible despite the alcohol, too many nerves, too many unknowns.

James had dreamed about a crash, neither Thomas’ or Silver’s this time, but his own crash, his own death. Crumpled red carbon fiber and blood seeping through his jumpsuit and orange flames eating him whole. He awoke suddenly and lay awake for a long time watching the sunlight grow stronger across his ceiling and wondering what it would feel like to die. 

James stumbled blearily down to breakfast at the appointed hour - his head was muggy, his heart ached and his nerves felt like they were on fire.   

Silver for his part didn’t look much better which gave James some sort of sick satisfaction. He was drinking a cup of coffee and poking half-heartedly at a bowl of oatmeal. Dark circles ringed his eyes despite the 1000 watt smile firmly plastered across his face. His leg was already bouncing beneath the table, sending plates and mugs rattling.

He wished James a good morning with uncharacteristic sincerity. James grunted his response and quickly fixed himself a cup of tea. 

.....

The shuttle took them to Albert Park around midmorning. Silver, sitting tense as a rod, bounced his right leg incessantly and fiddled with the zippers of the pockets of his team sweat-jacket. His wide blue eyes stared hungrily out the window at the passing landscape, nimble fingers working the zipper pull up and down, and up and down, and up and down. _ Zip, zip, zip _ .

James wanted to shoot him.  

“You know I can’t understand a fucking word of this radio station,” Silver said, to no one in particular, ( _ zip zip zip _ ) “Australians are truly something else...” ( _ zip zip zip _ )

It felt like nail files were being dragged across the surface of James’ brain, nerves singing high and bright throughout his body, almost painful in anticipation.

_ Zip Zip Zip _

“I swear to God John Silver if you unzip that pocket one more time I will kill you” He grit out. He didn’t sound as murderous as he had wanted to but going by Silver’s expression it had achieved something. 

“Okay but…” 

“If you open your mouth one more time I will also kill you” 

Silver mimed locking up his lips and throwing the key out onto the highway. 

The leg continued to bounce though. 

James did his best to ignore him.

.....

The energy of a race day is beyond compare. Thomas used to joke that one could probably power an entire city simply off the nerves and the excitement generated on and around the track. The whole place hummed with activity and nerves  - the sounds of music blaring from multiple speakers, the noise of the pit crews checking over the cars, the excited hum of the crowd. 

Despite the early hour the grandstands were already filling up. A sea of people, some wearing team colors to show their allegiance, some not, were already seated or moving about the track, starry-eyed and excited despite exhaustion. This was the sort of thing James understood, the sort of crowd he could handle. There were no ulterior motives to be found here. Everyone was here for the same reason - because they craved some taste of that unattainable freedom, that technicolor heaven. James wondered how they could possibly find  _ watching _ it exciting. 

Silver lit a cigarette before he was even fully off the shuttle, his hands shaking. They walked to the boxes side by side, silent save for Silver’s hollow, limping footsteps and the meditative pop and suck of his lips around the cigarette. The sun caught in Silver’s eyes and amplified the color, blue like laser beams, blue like heaven. James watched him without really meaning to, the way he blew smoke out the side of his mouth, the way he fiddled with his lighter - sending sparks into his fingers without actually lighting a flame. In the sun the inky curls of his hair seemed almost red, highlights and optics and Australian sunlight throwing James for a loop. Suddenly the silence seemed too much to bear. 

“I’m sorry,” James said at last, they were hard words to say, and he grit his teeth into them like he could bite them in half. But he meant them, and he needed Silver to know. 

Silver looked over at him, incredulity written in his expression. 

“You’re what now?” 

“Don’t make me say it again” James huffed. 

Silver shrugged but he was smiling. 

“This is the first time I’ve raced since… since then” Silver said, easy, like he was discussing the weather. The lighter flicked between his nervous fingers, throwing sparks, betraying himself. “Not the first time I’ve driven, obviously, but the first time I’ve raced. It’s a very different feeling” 

James humed agreement. Silver’s explanation felt like some kind of forgiveness. At this point James was willing to take what he could get. A weight had lifted. 

…..

As the sun fell tensions and anxiety rose; Billy and Max chewing on the ends of their pens, sometimes running over to the computers to fiddle with something, Eleanor paced, heels clicking on the floor, Silver chain smoked and shook, and James - James curled and uncurled his hands in the sleeves of his jumpsuit and waited for something horrible to happen. The crowd outside grew in size and volume, a pack of baying dogs. 

There were several events throughout the day that weren’t directly Formula One related and, as such, didn’t require James’ or Silver’s presence or participation. The problem with being the main event was that it left you with all day to stew and think and become anxious about everything that was to come. 

Miranda used to say that F1 drivers were like race horses, nervous wrecks when not handled properly. Silver, it seemed, was a perfect example of this. 

James returned from getting a lunch that he couldn’t bring himself to eat to find Silver pacing up and down the length of the box and talking animatedly to Max, cigarette dangling precariously from between his fingers. He was already done up in the black warmup suit, his hair sticking out at odd angles like he had been obsessively running his hands through it. 

“...I mean it’s not like it's all that hard and I know that but I just can’t do it. I don’t have the spatial awareness or something…”

“Mon petit frisé” Max interrupted, fiddling with something on her tablet “While I am sure you have some very interesting things to say I have to go get your car in shape if you want to drive at all today so let me do my job” 

Silver took a long drag from his cigarette looking sheepish “Yeah, yeah of course. Sorry” 

“Be sorry,” she said jokingly then added “You’ll be fine today”

Silver made an anxious noise in the back of his throat.

Max gave him a peck on the cheek on her way out. 

…..

2:00 was the photographs and the driver’s parade. Silver, prosthetic leg left behind, feigned ease with being on display sitting in the first row of the photo. James, sitting beside him, caught Peter’s eye over Silver’s head. Peter, seated besides Charles Vane, both of them done up in blinding Ferrari red, gave James a smirk, casting his eyes to Silver and back up to James.  _ “What a nut,”  _ his expression said  _ “why are you still with them?”.  _ James shot him his best  _ “fuck you”  _ glare and studiously ignored all of his erstwhile teammate’s attempts at nonverbal communication. 

“Hello Flint,” Said Jack Rackham in his usual Australian drawl, leaning over between Silver and James. Mousey and sharp with a terrible mullet and even worse fashion sense, Rackham drove for McLaren alongside his on-again off-again partner Anne Bonny. James, surprisingly, actually found Rackham tolerable. They had made their debuts in the same year which, in the world of Formula One, tied them to each other irreversibly. 

“Hello Rackham” James replied, disinterested. 

“And you must be John Silver,” Rackham said, shaking Silver’s hand. 

“Hi” Said Silver, smile turned up to 1,000. Rackham didn’t appear to find anything annoying about Silver’s smile because he simply beamed back. 

“I hear you’re P6” Rackham continued “right behind me. I’ll make sure to watch my mirrors”

Silver chuckled “I don’t know if that’ll do you much good” 

“We shall see” Rackham replied, eyes glittering with his usual brand of well-intentioned mischief as he leaned back to whisper something to Anne. 

…..

The race itself was slated to begin at 4:00 sharp - 58 laps of perfect freedom all over in around 89 minutes. The weather was perfect, the track dry, visibility clear to the horizon. 

Scantily clad grid girls pranced about between the cars on their way back to their spot in the paddock, carrying parasols and name plates. James rolled his eyes behind the mirrored visor of his helmet. If he craned his neck he could see the tail of Silver’s car, two rows ahead of him.

The track was cleared, the lights went on, and the universe froze.

Something very close to calm overcame James in the minutes before the beginning of a race, his vision became pinpointed, focused only on the lights and the car directly in front. His breathing slowed. The Walrus hummed, coiled in readiness, ready to spring forward.

James wanted to laugh to break the tension in his muscles, the moment a silent bubble of anticipation, so thick you could taste it. 

The cars idled on the grid, exhaust drifting in clouds - in those long moments everyone balanced on a knife edge between chaos and calm, every breath was held, every eye trained on the signal lights.  

The lights went out.

James always thought that the sound of 22 engines accelerating at once was the sound that had been heard at the creation of the universe - an unending, multi-pitched scream, a shriek of excitement - it was the sound of a  _ beginning.  _ There was nothing more hair-raisingly beautiful. 

They took off down the straight.

“Alright Captain?” Billy’s voice, crackly over the radio as James leaned into the first turn. 

“Yeah” James replied. It was good. He was good. 

Speed is not about seeing. There is almost no use in being able to see when going so fast. By the time the brain registers that something is wrong the driver is already dead, skidded out or flipped or crushed against the barrier. Speed is all about sensation, all about the feel of the thing. James could feel the texture of the track through the wheels, all the way up into his teeth. He could feel the spaces between the other cars like he could feel the spaces between his fingers. There were no thoughts, no words, nothing but pure  _ feeling.  _ James was everywhere and yet he was nowhere. He was, somehow, omnipresent and yet so very still inside his own body. 

He passed the car in front of him on the 5th lap, pulling into 9th with Billy whooping in his ear. 

Everything was lining up, every sector perfectly primed, every acceleration smooth. For the first time in years James was fully present in his body, fully focused. There was nothing else, just the track and the wheels and the engine and himself. The car sang around the corners, laughing. James laughed with it. He was flying - he was a point at the crux of space and time and he felt as if he could do anything. 

They boxed him to change the tires twice, quickly, quietly, and then set him free again. 

Time became utterly meaningless inside the cockpit, inside the sheltered softness of his helmet.  _ He _ was time and yet time did not exist. There was no other force in the universe besides forward movement; there was nothing else in the world besides James and the car and the spaces between everything else. 

He passed another car, and then another, leaning into corners and letting the g-force take the air from his lungs. At some point, towards the end of the race, when every muscle in James’ body ached and every atom of him was spread across the track, he thought of Silver. Silver who was out somewhere in front, so far ahead that James couldn’t see him anymore, going so fast there was nothing to see, a flash in the dark, a bright spot on the horizon moving faster than the sun. James thought of Silver and he laughed and laughed and laughed - a giddy, choked sound. The sound one makes when the emotions of the moment are too strong to be felt. 

…..

James finished 7th. 

Silver finished a miraculous 4th, the highest Nassau had placed since 2013. 

Billy carried Silver on his shoulders through the paddock to the box, whooping and cheering.  Max yelled in excitement, hugged James tight and kissed his cheeks. Eleanor looked like she was ready to cry, jumping up and down like a child on christmas morning. 

And Silver, sweaty, triumphant, and high on victorious wonder, met James’ eyes across the box - eyes like ice and the arctic sea caught James’ and held them. Silver grinned, warm and wide and sparkling, looking like his heart was going to burst from joy and he wanted James to feel it. 

Billy was still yelling, wordless and ecstatic, the pit crews were hugging each other, jumping up and down, shouting victory. 

And Silver was still grinning. 

 

James grinned back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear god this is long. Okay.  
> \- First of all, sorry about the delay on the update. This chapter kicked my butt and I've had a lot of things going on.  
> \- I also apologize about the frankly excessive number of time-breaks in this chapter. It would have taken me 20 years to write it without them though so I think, in the interest of moving everything along, it was what had to be done.  
> \- In case you were curious Jack, Vane and Anne finished 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, respectively.   
> \- I wrote a spin off Billy-centric oneshot that fills the gap between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of this one that also fills in some of the background about Billy himself as well as about Nassau as a race team. You can read it [Over Here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9314021)  
> \- I can't come up with a fun fact right now cause it's 1:30am and I'm exhausted but since I'm shameless [this link](https://youtu.be/yM-ao9NTP3A) will take you to a video of Romain Grosjean telling his team how much he loves them over the radio.  
> \- As always: @ everyone who reads/comments/kudos this you guys make my life and are honestly the force that keeps me chugging along at this thing.


	6. Chapter 6

Silver was a miracle - some kind of heavenly body that had descended from another universe. 

He placed 4th in Shanghai, 5th in Bahrain and 3rd in Sochi - a terrifyingly exciting race that had everyone biting their nails until the beautifully unexpected first podium that left everyone in tears. Nassau was riding the high of victory their sudden validity. Suddenly Eleanor was fielding calls from sponsors day and night, Silver was getting invitations to do private interviews and Scott had decided that they could afford to give the tech staff a long overdue raise. Things were practically buzzing - possibility hummed, endless and distracting. For the first time in a long time, it looked like Nassau had some kind of future ahead of it. 

James was a little left behind by all this - not that he minded particularly. It felt like he was watching things from somewhere outside. The electric energy of the team seemed to reach him on the other side of an abyss that he could not cross. 

Silver seemed to be thriving, riding the high along with everyone else. He moved with a newfound bounce, a new sort of nervous self-confidence. He had decided to grow a beard which James had laughed at at first but now that he saw it - as carefully maintained as Silver’s hair was not - he found he quite liked it. Not that he would ever tell Silver that of course.

….. 

May 11th found the team back in Barcelona - for a race this time. Eleanor, in some sort of celebratory mood, had booked them at a hotel much closer to the city center and flown James and Silver out with the cars to “have a little vacation”. James wasn’t exactly sure how being anywhere with Silver was supposed to count as a  _ vacation _ but he didn’t press the point. 

Barcelona had always been one of James’ favorite cities - Miranda, in her infinite wisdom and good taste, had always loved the lights of Paris while Thomas had always been attracted to the vibrant romance of Rome - but there was something about the piecemeal nature of Barcelona in particular that tugged at James’ soul. 

He realized, stepping out of the cab at the entrance to the hotel after a day of wandering the city, that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone  _ why  _ Barcelona in particular. It wasn’t about the history, or the art, or the culture or even the climate. There was just a certain  _ something _ about it - an aura of possibility, like the greatest surprise, was simply around the next corner. 

James showered, dressed in clean clothes and sat on the edge of his bed absently flipping through the room service menu. 

Silver, unannounced, poked his dripping head around the connecting door and said, needlessly cheery “Don’t order anything. We’re going out for Paella.”

He looked like a wet poodle, black curls plastered to his shoulders. He was oddly charming in his soddenness. 

James tossed the menu onto the bed. “Who decided this? And do you ever knock?” 

“I did. And no” 

Silver’s dripping hair was making wet spots on his shirt. 

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to use a towel?” James asked tossing his discarded one at him. “You use it to take the water out of your hair so you don’t get your shirt wet” 

“I know what a towel is” Silver groused, beginning to rumple his hair in it. He crossed the room and flopped down in the desk chair. 

He was barefoot in jeans and a heather-grey henley. He looked soft, he looked clean; skin still a little pink around the edges from the hot water - blooms of color on the tops of his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. He smiled when he saw James looking at him - a gentle upturn of his lips, a sparkle in his periwinkle eyes. 

James’s heart felt soft for a moment.

“What you don’t like Paella?” Silver asked askance, flinging the now sopping towel at James.  His tousled hair had become a black dandelion fluff. 

“I didn’t say that” 

“Well then let's go!” 

“You don’t even have your fucking shoes on” 

“I’m working on it! Leave me alone” 

…..

They ended up in a small restaurant by the sea, just the two of them, huddled at a small table in a dim corner. A lit candle guttered in the centerpiece. Silver tried speaking to the waiter in Spanish before realizing it was a moot point and switching to English and hand gestures. 

“You know I hate Spanish,” Silver said once the waiter had taken their order and retreated to the kitchen, most likely to laugh at the man with the terrible accent sitting in the corner. “I grew up speaking the damn thing only to realize that the dialect makes me completely unintelligible to most people” 

“You grew up speaking Spanish?” James was suddenly floored by how little he actually knew about Silver. He knew the sensational stuff like everyone else - he knew about the accident and the pain and the driving - but he didn’t know anything about Silver as a person. Suddenly he was curious.

“Mhm,” Silver said around a mouthful of wine - it was good wine, some kind of Spanish vintage with a name James couldn’t pronounce - “I grew up in Caguas” 

James gave him a blank look.

“Puerto Rico,” Silver explained like James was an idiot “big nothing of a city way up in the mountains. Completely landlocked. Hot as balls” 

“Your English is good”

“Puerto Rico is essentially an American colony so I should hope so”

The silence stretched. Silver looked out the window. Their table felt dark and claustrophobic, wood-paneled and red - some kind of confession booth like the ones that James remembered from his childhood. 

James cleared his throat “I grew up in Padstow.”  _ an eye for an eye _ James figured  _ fuck it anyway _ “Tiny place in the south on the coast. Very stereotypical, green rolling hills and old buildings and chip shops and stuff” 

Silver snorted at that “of course you’re a fucking cliche. The ultimate all British boy James McGraw.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” James said, draining his glass. Silver leaned over to refill it and top his own up. 

It was like something had lifted, some tension had fled. James leaned back in his chair and watched the way Silver methodically ran the tip of one finger through the candle flame, bottom lip caught between his teeth in concentration. This time the silence was warm. 

The waiter brought them their meal - saffron rice and seafood and broth in a large cast-iron dish, steam rising. It smelled like heaven. Silver looked like he had seen the face of God. 

They ate in comfortable silence for the most part - the only sound the scraping of utensils against dishes and the soft gurgle of more wine being poured into glasses. 

…..

Afterward, they ended up walking along the shoreline in the opposite direction of their hotel on a quest to find an ice cream shop that Silver swore was somewhere nearby. 

The night was warm and the streetlights cast everything in shivering, cheap gold; rendering it at once intangible and hyper-real. James kept pace with Silver, walking slowly, watching the way that Silver watched everything else. He was smoking as he walked, shaggy head haloed in purple smoke like some kind of saint, his awkward, loping stride seeming easy in the twilit unreality.

The roll and suck of the ocean sounded like singing to James, comforting in its continual noise. It sounded like his childhood, like the heartbeat of a mother he had never known, like Thomas breathing somewhere beside him in the dark. 

That is the thing about the sea, it sounds the same wherever you are. 

After a while, Silver asked if they could sit down and James found them a bench along the edge of the sand facing the water that glittered just out of sight in the darkness. 

“I miss the beach,” Silver said, at long last, lighting another cigarette and leaning back against the bench. 

“You are, quite literally, sitting on the beach right now,” James said, gesturing at the sand in front of them. He was pleasantly tipsy, enough to feel a little loose in his own skin, enough to feel the distances between the people walking by like the spaces between stars. It was a little bit like how he felt when he drove, or rather how he felt  _ after _ he drove, the soft, quiet, rose-colored high of it all, caught on that knife's edge between sobriety and blackout. 

“I mean I miss  _ going _ to the beach. Once I got my first car I used to drive down to the beach when I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Just - just go down to some stretch of coast bordered by fucking jungle and go swimming. In my clothes sometimes. Just go out and feel the sand between my toes and the water. I used to be a really good swimmer you know” he said “really good” 

Silver took a drag from his cigarette “Now I can’t even walk on sand much less swim, certainly not in the ocean anyway”. 

James’ eye was drawn to the way Silver’s left leg stuck out, straight, pin-like, unnatural - very clearly metal. He felt bad about it, both for staring and also for having nothing to say. 

“I was raised by my grandfather,” James said suddenly, needing something to fill the silence with and hating himself for it. 

Silver glanced at him, curious, open before turning back to watching the water, something that James was grateful for. If Silver wasn’t looking at him he could pretend no one was listening. 

“My parents died when I was young. Boating accident”  _ why was he telling Silver this? Why?   _ “My grandfather took me in. He was a fisherman.” 

James felt a little like he had just taken a knife to his skin and removed it all, leaving him flayed raw. 

“I never knew my parents either” Said Silver “I was raised in an orphanage for the most part. I was adopted when I was 11” 

The silence settled and stretched between them. They were tied together in that moment, hurt recognizing hurt and latching on to it. For a moment they weren’t teammates or racing drivers or anyone special at all - for a moment they were just two men out on a park bench sharing stories like they didn’t ache. 

…..

Only later, when Max asked him about it at free practice the next morning would James realize how odd they must have looked. Two men out to dinner, sharing secrets out on a bench by the sea. 

“It wasn’t like that” he growled at her. Something in his heart twinged painfully at the implication. The thought that he would ever go on a date with anyone after Thomas sent a spike of ice through James’ lungs.

“Suit yourself mon cher,” Max said, patting his cheek. 

James passive-aggressively pulled his balaclava over his face and put on his helmet to silence the ringing in his ears that sounded a little like burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I'm back despite everything I said! With a massively character-centric chapter this time because I realized that stuff had to start moving or I would literally die. Next chapter will be race-centric again but I figured there's only so many different ways I can write about driving before it gets a little stale. Plus I figure most people are here for the characters and not the cars so...  
> A few points:  
> \- I have never been to Barcelona in my life so my apologies to anyone who lives there or has been there for any sort of glaring mischaracterizations.  
> \- I hear that people get death threats over paella - I've only ever had it with seafood. Please don't kill me.  
> \- I'm salty about the US' relationship with Puerto Rico (can you tell?)  
> \- I'm thinking about doing some short Silver-centric drabbles that would cover the three races I glossed over at the beginning of the chapter. 
> 
> Fun Fact! Even after a race has been completed, an f1 car’s tires will be about 120 degrees C (248 degrees F) – hot enough to cook an egg on.
> 
> Thank you so much, as always, to everyone who reads, comments and kudos! You guys make my life brighter!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Ayy so I've got a playlist for this AU [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/bloodthirstypandasfromthesky/playlist/1pKR8xECegJG4NH83qcnOg). Please feel free to say hi/ask me things about this AU/drown in Black Sails and/or F1 hell with me over on [tumblr](http://bloodthirstypandasfromthesky.tumblr.com/).


End file.
